I Remember

I’m running up cobblestone roads one long stride after another, hopping off and on the curb, dodging the strolling pedestrians and miniature cars as needed. Sweat is beginning to form beads on my forehead and the back of my neck and my thighs are just starting to feel the previous hundren and seventy-two strides, but that couldn’t matter less. I pass one boulangerie, then a Franprix, then a café where I can see in a blur the patrons looking at me like a crazy person for wearing nothing but basketball shorts and a wife beater at the end of winter. I’m not cold. I have my headphones to keep me warm. They transform the world around me into my own discotheque, putting the sounds of traffic, the metro below my feet and the French chatter all around me on mute. All that is heard is the warm, heavy thump of Deadmau5 filling my body.

The path continues, winding through narrows trees and tourists. Even intersections of anxiously crawling traffic pose no obstacle when bounding off each step feels like I just learned how to fly. When the world is acoustically shut out, it becomes a surreal adventure, free of consequence, inviting me to dance through it as I please.

I can see my apex ahead in a beautiful beaconing white glow. It is the midpoint of the run, the highest point. Once I attain the steps in front of the Sacré Coeur I can take a deep breath and let gravity guide me the rest of the way down back to my room in Foyer St. Lazare. However there still lays a significant stretch of American and Japanese tourists to sidestep before reaching the Parisian summit.

The cobble floor beneath my feet feels so right; it is my dance floor. I’m sweating profusely now, and fatigue has dared to show its face at a party to which it certainly was not invited. The track playing is fading, and the idea of walking the rest of the route crosses my mind. My iPod shuffles to the next track and the bass thump of resurrection begins. Deadmau5 designs all of his tracks with a long, empty, even boring phrase of nothing but the repetitive bass kick at the beginning and end of each tune. I’m no disc jockey but I can make an educated guess that it’s there to match beats from one track to another when mixing them live. Though the opening phrases seem to have very little substance to distinguish one from another, I know after beat one that ‘I Remember’ is the lucky track selected by the iPod with impeccable timing. I could have been running for three days straight without an once of life left in me, but if this song starts playing I could easily press on for its nine minute and fifty-nine second duration. 

With the external world of sound blocked out by my oversized headphones and the electronic trance beat filtering into my skull, my body becomes instantaneously filled with inspiration and energy. If pure positive energy could take a liquid form, listening to I Remember would be the syringe that pumps it into my arm. The option of standing still, sitting down or taking part in any sedentary activity becomes an impossibility when it plays. The steep incline up Rue Caulaincourt becomes a breeze with the new motivation funneling through my ears.

It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly about the song makes it so special. The electrophonic groove has a circular dynamic that rolls up and down at just the right frequency that the tune to play itself over and over without ever getting tired. Dreamy trance organs warmly fill the acoustic space where it lives, stroking a Carrefour of emotion and sound wherever it may be in the brain. The organs continue their dance on the offbeat reverb as ambient vocal tracks act as a perfect counterpart, building up slowly, all the while synchronizing itself with the emotions of the listener. As the drop approaches at a teasing pace, the organ and vocal levels increase steadily as well as the listener’s heartbeat and anticipation for that which lies on the other side of the peak.

There it is, the drop.  A small crescendo and the bass thump is introduced along with the vocal chorus. From an analytical perspective there isn’t a huge amount of difference between what is heard before and after the drop making it challenging to explain the extreme catharsis felt at that turning point in the music. The bass line seems to reach out with an elegantly gloved hand, float down to the chest of the listener, and grab him by the heart to move him up and down with the beat.

The composition of the music is beautifully balanced in a way that it could repeat endlessly without losing its magic. The slow fade-out starting around eight minutes and thirty seconds never ceases to disappoint. Though I wonder how many others feel the same emotional arousal when listening to the song. While a talented Canadian producer created it with love and passion, the better part of love that I reserve for the song originates externally and has somehow been tied to the music. The history of Deadmau5’s ‘I Remember’ has a cumulative role in my life. The music has engrained in itself a plethora of memories created with different people and in different places wherever the song may have been heard. I would venture to say that the love I feel when listening to it goes far beyond the appreciation for the sound itself, that I actually feel the accumulation of the people I have danced to it with and the places I have heard it.

I have heard lots of different music in many different places and many tracks in my iTunes library have their own connotations. ‘I Remember’ is singular in that the only associations I have with are those of love. The first time I was introduced to the sounds of Deadmau5 was at a concert in Chicago with my best friend Stephanie. We took on the dance floor of the grungy vintage Congress Theater with force. I learned that night how to release my body and let music take over. I had never had such a good night out. The event made such an impact on my life that I continue to carry the ticket stub in my wallet.

‘I Remember’ played another significant role in the development of the best relationship I have ever had. Between Deadmau5 and dubstep, our taste in music was one of the first things we bonded over. It played over the speakers in my tiny room as we got ready for a night out. We couldn’t help but dance in the confines of the foyer. It is simply impossible not to move. We loved that song together and though we are currently on opposite sides of this blue marble, I can feel her dancing next to me whenever it starts to play.

Even when I play the music over my laptop speakers, the cobblestone of Paris starts flying once again beneath my feet. I spent the most life-changing year in the city of lights on the other side of the Atlantic, and taking it all in from the top of the Sacré Coeur, each time with the beat of Deadmau5 pulsing through my brain, created an inseparable relationship between the song and the love I have for that magical city.

The title ‘I Remember’ is now almost too a propos. It has become painfully literal, as everything tied to it is memory of past experiences. There is nothing I can do with them but remember. The song itself remains, however, just as powerful as it was a year ago and listening to it produces an equal effect. It brings all my associations I share with the track and plants them in the seat next to me, so close and electrifying yet, intangible. It is close enough that I want to play it one more time.